Monday, 31 July 2017

Naval Preparations

OK, so having decided to make an effort to play something on or before International Naval Wargames Day I was left with the minor problem of not having any teenie-tiny ships.

Now, for anyone else in this situation, I'd recommend printing out some of the free images from the Junior General (either top-downs or waterline images) or perhaps buying some of the top-downs from Topside Minis. However, I don't currently have a working printer and don't want to wait for the transatlantic post (however tempting it it to refight the Battle of Coronel for under ten quid!).

So, half an hour with the old EVA foam sheets, rounded scissors and superglue, and I have the nuclei of those old adversaries: Red Fleet and Green Fleet.

Now I could waffle on about the usefulness of having non-scale- and non-unit-specific counters instead of beautiful miniatures, but the brutal fact is that this the limit of my crafting skills. I wanted something quick and dirty for what is in effect a play-test of rules. For me the important bit is knowing which way the ship is pointing, and these will do. The space abaft of the ships (d'see what I did there!) is to add some form of identifying mark. At the moment I'm thinking of a sticker that can be quickly removed. One of the other advantages of EVA sheets is that they will take drawing pins, if that's how I choose to mark damage.

Another advantage is that having scissors and glue out is getting one step closer to getting brushes and paint out...

2 comments:

It'll be interesting to see what you play, now we've seen the forces. I've a few rules sets, but none that are designed for solo use (unfortunately) and I've not got around to thinking how to modify them for such play.

Exactly! The received wisdom seems to be that naval wargames are well suited to solo play, but nobody ever spells out the detail.

That's why I want to be able to try some out before putting money into models or more rules. Phil Barker's Damn Battleships! has an optional mechanism for determining the character of a fleet commander - I was considering rolling that each turn for each side in order to add some variety to my own actions.